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We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech. Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away

by devtul 6y ago

cmdshiftf4 6y ago
>Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away That doesn't enter the equation for what I would imagine is 99.99% of users. It's the erosion of privacy in the name of a) "Safety" and b) convenience The average person of the world has shown that they will trade virtually anything for the perception of convenience, or "safety". Look at the most recent gun ban in Canada for an obvious example; An act riddled with nonsense, already acknowledged to be completely ineffective at preventing gun crimes, pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic to the applause of a large part of the populace there in exchange for the false perception of "safety". The most frightening thing is just how effective it is.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Yes, the ban may not be perfect, but as a Canadian, I can say unequivocally: I don't need perfect to be the enemy of good. There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads. The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada. A huge number of people have wanted to ban weapons like these since Ecole Polytechnique [1] -- and probably much further back. We've been lucky to have few enough such mass murders to remember many by name, and it also makes them horrifying enough that we're not going to sit back and pray the crime away. The Liberal Party (currently in power) ran on banning these weapons. Then they banned the weapons. They did the job they were elected to do. I don't think that's a good example tbh. [edit] Let's be super clear when you say "pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic" -- you're seeming to imply that the minority is somehow strong-arming the majority. That's the exact opposite of how that works in the Canadian parliamentary democratic system. A minority government is in a very weak position and can be removed at any time. If this was at all controversial the next confidence motion would be swiftly defeated and the government would fall. A minority government wouldn't do something like this without absolute confidence. Unlike a majority government a minority government must rule by consensus or face immediate removal. I think they normally don’t even make it past the 3 year mark. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_massacre
  - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
    PAL/RPAL holders, or weapons stolen from them, account for virtually no gun crimes in Canada. Essentially all are carried out with illegal weapons smuggled in from the US. Therefore, the ban is ineffective in serving its mandate, punishes law abiding, statistically harmless individuals needlessly and saddles the taxpayer, of which only 60% of households in Canada are, with yet more debt for nothing. It has also set a very dangerous precedent in Canada as to how "unpopular" rights, not explicitly in the Charter, can be stripped by the pen stroke of a populist. But HN, and this topic in particular, is not the place for this discussion. Good luck to you when the political pendulum swings.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      > It has also set a very dangerous precedent in Canada as to how "unpopular" rights, not explicitly in the Charter, can be stripped by the pen stroke of a populist. To be fair, if it's not in the charter, it's not a right. You are of course correct re the pendulum and unpopular privileges.
  - throwawayosiu1 6y ago
    I’m a Canadian and I find that absolutely the opposite. 1. > I don't need perfect to be the enemy of good. There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads Slipper slope don’t you say? Quite a lot of guns on that list were not even available in Canada or would be available. Furthermore, we have some of the strictest gun laws around. What you said above to me sounds like we also need to just ban McDonalds and others from Canada too - considering obesity kills more Canadians than gun deaths no? 2. > The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada. Have you by chance gone throw the process of getting a PAL? Our issue is not responsible gun owners - it’s the access to illegal guns coming from south of the border and this bill did absolutely nothing to stop it. It was political theater at the end of which a minority of citizens were affected (and they probably didn’t even vote in for the Libs anyways) > it also makes them horrifying enough that we're not going to sit back and pray the crime away By not dealing with the influx of guns from the south - we are literally doing JUST that further more at the cost of law abiding gun owners too.
kibwen 6y ago
There's not a single social network that has begun to require phone verification because of the risk of "toxicity or hate speech". It's all to fight spam and to better track user activity (and, if we're being charitable to them, perhaps to stymie deliberate propaganda/fake news).
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  This. A service I built+run started getting overrun with bot users. The signup CAPTCHA didn’t help because they’d sign-up for accounts using humans - then after that’s done they’d copy their access tokens to the bot users. We couldn’t use a CAPTCHA for every operation on the platform. But by requiring a real phone number that we verify (by placing a TTS phone call - not an SMS - as processing received TTS calls is much harder for the bot makers to automate) - but also looking-up the phone number’s SS7 info to prevent people from using Skype, Google Voice, and Twilio users - all commonly used by bot operators. (Legitimate users that want an account but can’t make it past our bot screen can still contact us directly to be set-up - and to-date no-one has done this or complained about the (admittantly user-hostile) verification process.
  - AlchemistCamp 6y ago
    I don't know what your service is but I simply wouldn't be able to use it as my only phone number is Google Voice. It's highly likely that prospective users just leave when encountering your restrictions and having their phone numbers rejected.
    - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      It’s a B2B service (“B2SB”?) - not targeting people/consumers - so it’s reasonable to assume they have a real phone number.
      - erik_seaberg 6y ago
        Which mobile carriers do you support, if not Google Fi (which is mine)? Or only landlines (which barely exist at my day job)?
eanzenberg 6y ago
No we won’t, and you can thank the true patriots who continue to defend your rights.
alasdair_ 6y ago
>We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech. (I spent a good few minutes trying to come up with a politer response than the following. I failed.) Bullshit. I keep seeing this “free speech” slippery-slope claim. It’s simply not true. I don’t know of a single mainstream or even semi-mainstream us or eu-based site that demands PII to stock “hate speech”. They ask for two main reasons: 1. Money. A confirmed “real” user is worth more. 2. Anti-abuse/spam. The sites are tired of dealing with bots.
- viridian 6y ago
  I can't speak to websites, but I can speak to community discords that have 10,000+ users where hate speech prevention is the reason that you have to provide proof of identity.
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    I have been on several such discord channels. In the ones I’ve been on, they got tired of people spamming nazi shit or the n-word over and over again, in addition to other forms of obnoxious spam. This isn’t so much an anti-hate speech protection as a general anti-abuse protection

We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech. Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away

by devtul 6y ago

We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech. Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away

cmdshiftf4 6y ago

>Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away That doesn't enter the equation for what I would imagine is 99.99% of users. It's the erosion of privacy in the name of a) "Safety" and b) convenience The average person of the world has shown that they will trade virtually anything for the perception of convenience, or "safety". Look at the most recent gun ban in Canada for an obvious example; An act riddled with nonsense, already acknowledged to be completely ineffective at preventing gun crimes, pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic to the applause of a large part of the populace there in exchange for the false perception of "safety". The most frightening thing is just how effective it is.

arcticbull 6y ago
Yes, the ban may not be perfect, but as a Canadian, I can say unequivocally: I don't need perfect to be the enemy of good. There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads. The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada. A huge number of people have wanted to ban weapons like these since Ecole Polytechnique [1] -- and probably much further back. We've been lucky to have few enough such mass murders to remember many by name, and it also makes them horrifying enough that we're not going to sit back and pray the crime away. The Liberal Party (currently in power) ran on banning these weapons. Then they banned the weapons. They did the job they were elected to do. I don't think that's a good example tbh. [edit] Let's be super clear when you say "pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic" -- you're seeming to imply that the minority is somehow strong-arming the majority. That's the exact opposite of how that works in the Canadian parliamentary democratic system. A minority government is in a very weak position and can be removed at any time. If this was at all controversial the next confidence motion would be swiftly defeated and the government would fall. A minority government wouldn't do something like this without absolute confidence. Unlike a majority government a minority government must rule by consensus or face immediate removal. I think they normally don’t even make it past the 3 year mark. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_massacre
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  PAL/RPAL holders, or weapons stolen from them, account for virtually no gun crimes in Canada. Essentially all are carried out with illegal weapons smuggled in from the US. Therefore, the ban is ineffective in serving its mandate, punishes law abiding, statistically harmless individuals needlessly and saddles the taxpayer, of which only 60% of households in Canada are, with yet more debt for nothing. It has also set a very dangerous precedent in Canada as to how "unpopular" rights, not explicitly in the Charter, can be stripped by the pen stroke of a populist. But HN, and this topic in particular, is not the place for this discussion. Good luck to you when the political pendulum swings.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    > It has also set a very dangerous precedent in Canada as to how "unpopular" rights, not explicitly in the Charter, can be stripped by the pen stroke of a populist. To be fair, if it's not in the charter, it's not a right. You are of course correct re the pendulum and unpopular privileges.
- throwawayosiu1 6y ago
  I’m a Canadian and I find that absolutely the opposite. 1. > I don't need perfect to be the enemy of good. There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads Slipper slope don’t you say? Quite a lot of guns on that list were not even available in Canada or would be available. Furthermore, we have some of the strictest gun laws around. What you said above to me sounds like we also need to just ban McDonalds and others from Canada too - considering obesity kills more Canadians than gun deaths no? 2. > The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada. Have you by chance gone throw the process of getting a PAL? Our issue is not responsible gun owners - it’s the access to illegal guns coming from south of the border and this bill did absolutely nothing to stop it. It was political theater at the end of which a minority of citizens were affected (and they probably didn’t even vote in for the Libs anyways) > it also makes them horrifying enough that we're not going to sit back and pray the crime away By not dealing with the influx of guns from the south - we are literally doing JUST that further more at the cost of law abiding gun owners too.

kibwen 6y ago

There's not a single social network that has begun to require phone verification because of the risk of "toxicity or hate speech". It's all to fight spam and to better track user activity (and, if we're being charitable to them, perhaps to stymie deliberate propaganda/fake news).

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
This. A service I built+run started getting overrun with bot users. The signup CAPTCHA didn’t help because they’d sign-up for accounts using humans - then after that’s done they’d copy their access tokens to the bot users. We couldn’t use a CAPTCHA for every operation on the platform. But by requiring a real phone number that we verify (by placing a TTS phone call - not an SMS - as processing received TTS calls is much harder for the bot makers to automate) - but also looking-up the phone number’s SS7 info to prevent people from using Skype, Google Voice, and Twilio users - all commonly used by bot operators. (Legitimate users that want an account but can’t make it past our bot screen can still contact us directly to be set-up - and to-date no-one has done this or complained about the (admittantly user-hostile) verification process.
- AlchemistCamp 6y ago
  I don't know what your service is but I simply wouldn't be able to use it as my only phone number is Google Voice. It's highly likely that prospective users just leave when encountering your restrictions and having their phone numbers rejected.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    It’s a B2B service (“B2SB”?) - not targeting people/consumers - so it’s reasonable to assume they have a real phone number.
    - erik_seaberg 6y ago
      Which mobile carriers do you support, if not Google Fi (which is mine)? Or only landlines (which barely exist at my day job)?

eanzenberg 6y ago

No we won’t, and you can thank the true patriots who continue to defend your rights.

alasdair_ 6y ago

>We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech. (I spent a good few minutes trying to come up with a politer response than the following. I failed.) Bullshit. I keep seeing this “free speech” slippery-slope claim. It’s simply not true. I don’t know of a single mainstream or even semi-mainstream us or eu-based site that demands PII to stock “hate speech”. They ask for two main reasons: 1. Money. A confirmed “real” user is worth more. 2. Anti-abuse/spam. The sites are tired of dealing with bots.

viridian 6y ago
I can't speak to websites, but I can speak to community discords that have 10,000+ users where hate speech prevention is the reason that you have to provide proof of identity.
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  I have been on several such discord channels. In the ones I’ve been on, they got tired of people spamming nazi shit or the n-word over and over again, in addition to other forms of obnoxious spam. This isn’t so much an anti-hate speech protection as a general anti-abuse protection